


The Art of Losing Gracefully

by sgt_fuckybarnes



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Captain America: The First Avenger, F/M, M/M, Mentions of Period Typical Sexism, One-Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-28 11:58:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16241150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sgt_fuckybarnes/pseuds/sgt_fuckybarnes
Summary: In which Peggy goes to war for the man she cares for, in more ways than one.





	The Art of Losing Gracefully

The war started the way all wars do- with men and words they’d regret. Steve was alive and he had won and he had saved everyone and Peggy’s prize was a shot-through radio and a promise over crackling static airwaves. The first shot was on an open field of battle, three hundred odd civilian witnesses when Barnes clapped his hands together like a gunshot and shouted out a war cry-

‘Let’s hear it for Captain America!’

Steve looked away from her, just for a moment but he looked all the same, and she knew, and Barnes knew too, could taste his victory with the blood in the air. His prize was a smile, sheepish and grateful, and Peggy vowed not to be caught unawares again. 

The lines were drawn quickly after that. Steve’s golden hair and his gaze on her arse in a tight red dress and his hands soft and bleeding were hers. Key territories to assure her victory, to be defended fiercely from prying grey eyes and steady sniper hands. His wide blue eyes and the promise of a dance, newly conquered cities and invaded lands.   
‘I’m invisible, I feel like I’m turning into you’

Not a sign of weakness, not like Peggy wanted to assume, but a quiet reminder. Steve’s past, Steve’s memories, the fading ghost of a man with two dollars and 91 pounds to his name were all firmly behind Barnes’s enemy line and it wasn’t something he’d let her forget anytime soon. Barnes settled back down at the bar, and the battlefield calmed for a moment. Peggy took her time to breath, to regroup. 

It wasn’t a loss, she told herself. At worst it was a draw, and a solemn reminder how much history Steve had with her enemy. He was licking his wounds now, his jaw jutted sullenly and a cigarette dangling precariously from his fingers. He was very much the picture of a man used to getting what he wanted, and it made Peggy tense. He glanced up at her, his glare acidic and familiar. 

Men, she thought. If you’ve met one you’ve met the lot. 

She glared back. The fear in Barnes’s eyes as he quickly dropped her gaze stabbed her with guilt.

Peggy sat down next to him. The music seemed to echo slower around them, relativity at its finest as Barnes turned to gawk at her. It didn’t bring the slow dread in her stomach that accompanied most men’s stares, but it hardly calmed her nerves, either. 

‘James…’ she began tentatively, nails drumming against the sticky countertop of the bar. A four beat rhythm, the sound of approaching horses. Of approaching war. She tried again to speak. 

‘James, what are you doing?’ 

‘Fetishizing my best friend’s biology.’ He replied darkly. 

She didn’t know what to say to that, but every British bone in her body told her not to laugh. She laughed. 

‘Good to know I’m amusing you, Agent.’ Barnes said, fixing Peggy with a truly filthy look. She had the decency to blush, glancing down at her still-tapping fingers. 

‘If it helps, I can assure you that you’re not the only one. I think you and I have got competition.’ She admitted. Barnes made a noise that could have been a laugh in another situation. 

‘You have, maybe.’ He said, his voice twisting bitterly. That made Peggy laugh.

‘And here I thought we were having an honest conversation for once.’ She scoffed. ‘You and I both know it isn’t just me. You’re in this as much as I am.’

A little smirk played on his lips. 

‘Yeah, you wouldn’t look like a bug just crawled up your ass otherwise.’ He agreed, taking a long drag of his cigarette before he spoke. ‘But “in it” doesn’t mean on the same ground, does it, sweetheart?’

She paused, thought for a moment. 

‘Barnes, can I offer you a bit of advice?’ She asked. He considered it, his glare softening for just a moment. The guns in his eyes stopped firing for a tentative negotiation. 

‘Fine.’

‘It’s something my father told me, when I was much younger, and upset over a boy much less worthy than Steve. He took me aside, on the third day of me locked in my bedroom. And do you know what he said?’

‘What?’

‘Shit or get off the pot, Sergeant.’

As quickly as the ceasefire had come, it had left, and Peggy had won- her prize was a promise over crackling static airwaves, and her prize was disappearing, lost to the slate gray ocean and the never-fading ghost of steady sniper hands. Peggy had won, but she’d won only silence. She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, clinging to the radio and her last shred of hope. 

‘He’s gone.’ Said her lips, softly and without permission. Her war was pointless, and she had been reckless, and she’d lost him to James without ever losing a battle. She exhaled, shaking, and stepped away from the radio. 

The truce started the way they always did, with both sides having been broken down to a shadow of former glory, stripped of their pride and their power and their memories. 

The shadow in the corner of Peggy’s room spoke softly, with an accent faintly Russian and a demeanor slightly terrified. 

‘I knew you’ the shadow told her, a cigarette dangling again from its pale and bleeding fingers. 

‘Oh?’ She asked. Her voice came out harsh and weak, but the shadow had never known anything different. 

‘I thought you were a stone cold bitch.’ 

Peggy laughed, and something about the harshness of its words, its reminiscence of her youth kept it from devolving into the hacking cough she was accustomed to. 

‘I was’ she replied, allowing a tiny smile to tug at the worried line of her mouth. ‘But only when I had to be.’ 

The shadow smiled, a flash of white in black hair and black clothes and blackened eyes. 

‘Does he visit you?’ The shadow asked, not unkindly. Peggy nodded.

‘More than he should. It isn’t good for him, living in the past.’ 

‘Can...can I visit you?’ He asked, a hand worrying with the hem of his Kevlar. 

‘Thought you didn’t like me.’

‘That was a long time ago. Things have changed.’

‘I’ve changed.’ Peggy corrected. ‘You, Sergeant, seem to have remained confoundingly the same.’

‘No.’ He said. ‘I’m not what I was.’ 

‘Oh? And what are you now?’ She asked, her head cocking to the side as she studied. 

‘Oh, you know.’ The sergeant replied. ‘I’m getting off the pot.’ 

Fin

**Author's Note:**

> Couldn't get this idea out of my head. Came from the thought that if Peggy was LGBT in the 40's she would probably be able to identify other LGBT people, as was necessary for survival back then, and she knew exactly what shit Bucky was tryna pull.


End file.
